Good Monday Morning, friends! Here’s today’s prompt:

Pick two genres and mash them up.

I think there’s been a lot of this in recent years and it’s usually awesome. What two would you like to see combined? SciFi and Zombies? Apocalyptic Romance? Or what about Historical Apocalypse?

I’m using my Faerie/Steampunk novel for this one and working on some worldbuilding. This is a story I’ve already got a few chapters on, but I want to flesh out some of the genre/setting type stuff.

So this is a story set in a fictional late 19^th century. Traditionally, steampunk has roots in Jules Verne and early science fiction, but it takes technology further than what was available. There are lots of unrealistic steam-powered devices and often lots of clockwork. It’s also generally a good way to empower female characters with freedoms not common in Victorian times.

I’ve also added the world of Faerie. This genre has been especially popular in YA literature lately, and often takes well-known characters like Oberon, Titania, Mab, and Puck for example and puts them into a different setting. I’ve chosen to make the Faerie world overlap the real world.

Blending faeries and steampunk is unique in this case because often iron (and symbolically, technology) are harmful to faeries. I liked the idea of allowing the magical creatures to interact with and enjoy the technology. And it gives me the bonus of augmenting any tricky technological aspect with a boost of magic.

Several steampunk stories I’ve read have included actual people as minor characters, often Queen Victoria, or in Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan series, Nikola Tesla. So far, I’ve referenced Tesla and Edison, but I’m considering Arthur Conan Doyle. He’d be a particularly good fit because of the faerie aspect.

In the early 1900s, a series of photographs soon to be called the Cottingley Fairies began to circulate. These photos showed young girls surrounded by what appeared to be fairies of various types. Doyle was particularly enthusiastic about them and believed them to be true. As for how and when I’ll work him into the story, I haven’t decided yet, but it will be fun to allow him to be right in my world, rather than simply ridiculed as he was historically.

Another aspect of this story involves travel in an airship (very steampunk, although mine blends magic with the cogs and gears). I’ve had fun researching fairy stories from different European countries, so that my characters can encounter different types of faeries depending on where they are. I’m also considering an encounter with a Dracula-type vampire in Eastern Europe.

I actually have a fairly decent handle on the mythology of this world. The trouble has been blending it smoothly into the story, so that it’s not just huge chunks of background information. I have lots of places I’d like my characters to travel on their quest, but I’m still working on reasons for them to go from place to place. They’re trying to break a curse, but each destination needs to give them some kind of clue, either to solve the problem or lead them to the next location, or both. That’s the tricky part.

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In related writing news, I’ve created a story binder; essentially printouts of the three stories I’d like to focus on. I’m working my way through the drafts as they stand and creating my lists, like I mentioned on Day 3. Creating nicely organized lists of what needs doing with enough information about the context and the problem will really help combat the issue I’d been having of wanting to work, but not knowing where to pick up the story. I’ll keep you updated as those lists progress, but I’m still undecided as to how much of the actual stories I’ll share here.